Tag: American History

The Day I Knew I Was Going to Teach History

In what has become a defining moment of my entire life, my first true humanities moment provided clarity and direction for my future in the midst of all…

The Power of a Perspective Change

In my first semester as a history grad student, I remember reading an assigned book that changed my perspective on history forever. Prior to grad school, I had…

Homegrown

My wanderlust took me to many places around the world where I experienced humanities moments at nearly every turn, but my hometown is where my relationship with the…

Reclaiming Richmond

Historian Ed Ayers discusses how Richmond, Virginia’s 2015 sesquicentennial celebration drew upon the past to re-imagine the future. He emphasizes the ways in which the event’s planners sought…

Historical Perspectives

I was born in Boston and raised in New England. I attended an elite, all-girls, private school in New England, which was established in 1854 with the mission…

Contested Territory: The Saigon Staircase in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum

Sometimes you have to leave a place to understand it better. By travelling to North Carolina, I have come to understand a local resource in a new and…

Sacrifices and the Consequences of Dissent

Muhammad Ali was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1966. Ali did not believe in fighting in the war and he was willing to sacrifice everything based on…

The Consequences of War Dissension

The most powerful Humanities Moments for me occurred during William Sturkey’s NEH session entitled “Contested Patriotisms: Dissent and Nationalism on the US Homefront.” One thing that stuck with…

Embracing the Complexity and Chaos of the Humanities Through a Photo

On May 8th, 1957, South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem was greeted by President Dwight Eisenhower (along with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles) at Washington National Airport…

The Emancipation Act of 1834 and Our Shared Freedom Story

“To be honest, I’m glad my family didn’t go to America. We ended slavery 30 years earlier. What were YOU guys thinking?” Our Bajan tour guide of St….

Southern History, Turned Upside Down

J. Porter Durham, Jr. grew up in the segregated South during a time when public Ku Klux Klan sightings were not uncommon. In this video, Durham describes how…

Answering the Question “Who Are We?”

In this short video, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns recalls having Robert Penn Warren read a passage from his novel All the King’s Men during the production of the…

Why We Always Come Back to Abraham Lincoln

Ken Burns describes how lines from a historic speech given by 29-year-old Abraham Lincoln have “haunted and inspired” him for nearly 40 years. Expanding on what is revealed…

The Day My Interest in Race in America Was Born

In this video submission, Ken Burns recounts how formative experiences, both deeply personal and as a young person growing up in the midst of the Civil Rights era,…

The Streets of New York are Like a Library

In this video submission, artist Carter Thompson discusses how a recent exhibit on the Harlem Renaissance revealed some of the fascinating history of the century-old building in which…

Coming to Terms with the Experience of War

National Endowment for the Humanities Chairman William “Bro” Adams shares how philosophy professor and World War II veteran Glenn Gray and his book The Warriors: Reflections on Men…

Spaces & Stories: Kent State

Stephen Kidd recalls a trip to Kent State University that he made as a high school student while growing up in Ohio. This visit to the site of…

The Virginia State Capitol: Past and Present

I had been to the Virginia State Capitol many times since I moved to Richmond in 1989. I’ve viewed proceedings in the House and Senate chambers, held meetings…

The Jungle: Personalizing the Historical Struggle of Workers

An early encounter with muckraking American novelist Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle exposed Kristen Shedd to issues surrounding human rights and animal rights in the early 20th century. For…